Service providers have made computer systems available through which a full computer resource, such as virtual computing machine running several applications on an operating system with compute, storage and network resources, can be made available to end users remotely over a computer network. Such systems are commonly called “virtual desktops” or remote desktops. Virtual desktops are run on one or more computers, called desktop hosts, which are hosted by the service provider.
In enterprises, such virtual desktops generally need to have access to resources on an enterprise's computer network. Service providers also typically have multiple enterprises as customers, also called tenants. Generally speaking, virtual desktops for one tenant are associated with a virtual private network for that tenant, while virtual desktops for another tenant are associated with a different virtual private network for the other tenant. For both tenants, the desktop hosts that host the virtual desktops are connected to a resource management appliance on a management host at a service provider's facility and are connected to a service provider network to allow the service provider to provision virtual desktops on those desktop hosts. A tenant appliance on the management host allows the tenant to manage the provisioned virtual desktops.
For some enterprises, using virtual desktops hosted at a service provider outside of the enterprise's private computer network can create security or regulatory issues. The service provider network might be considered an untrusted network. Service provider-hosted virtual desktops also can be an issue wherein significant data transfer loads exist between the virtual desktops and other resources in the enterprise network. In particular, some applications on the virtual desktop can generate or consume large amounts of data. Also, having an additional computer network to connect an end user's local device to a virtual desktop on a desktop host which in turn connects to enterprise resources can introduce latency and potential connectivity issues that do not arise with desktop computers connected directly to the enterprise network.